Comments on: Dreamhost FAIL

By: Aldo

Aldo — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:43:39 +0000

Anybody knows why I’d accumulate several sleeping php5.cgi process in the top command? I’m running Wordpres in DH shared host. The sleeping processes do not eat CPU but do eat memory, and I had resorted to a script to kill them periodically.

However, what’s the reason for them staying around? Shouldn’t php5.cgi go away once the wordpress page has been served?

By: kay

kay — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:54:53 +0000

Hello,

What i like with dreamhost PS is that they take care about everything.

Can you advice me any dedicated server easy to use for someone who knows nothing about servers ?

I want somebody to repair when it breaks, is there any company selling dedicated servers with a support as reliable as dreamhost one? (at least they reply fast!)

I want to move because my websites are not optimized and even set up at 4000 MB my websites show thousand of errors pages everyday, so better get 8GB dedicated for the same price as dreamhost 4GB PS !

Thanks for your help.

By: Dudek

Dudek — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:58:48 +0000

This is only Dreamhost problem so the solution is to change hosting …

By: Amanda French

Amanda French — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:20:54 +0000

We’ve been having the same problems, and we got the same damn form mail:

***

I’ve checked into why you’ve been receiving these internal server errors, and it seems your scripts have been getting automatically killed by our Process Watcher due to your sites going over Memory limits on the shared server:

I would highly recommend that you follow the steps in the following wiki
article in order to reduce your usage:

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Finding_Causes_of_Heavy_Usage

Also, please be aware that just because this site is the one getting
killed, it isn’t necessarily the problematic one.

For instance, if Site A is using 90% of your allotted memory usage, and
then Site B attempts to use an additional 15%, Site B will be 5% over and will get it’s script killed.

I’d also recommend looking into any 3rd party plugins you may be running, especially if you happen to be running WordPress installs as they can be notoriously poor at memory management. (Secret Tip: Removing them from the plugins directory is more effective then simply disabling them)

Lastly, you may want to look into DreamhostPS, as you will be able to
raise your memory limits to whatever limit you’d like.

After you’ve taken the steps in the wiki above, if you find that you
require further assistance in reducing your usage please let me know.

***

I definitely want to switch hosts.

By: nemanja

nemanja — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:29:34 +0000

i’ve had exactly the same issues with dreamhost. At the end, it looks like that blame not entirely DH. My site had last PR rating because there were too much 500 erorrs, and i’ve switched to VPS.

Once on VPS, i’ve managed to hunt one culprit (JomComment for Joomla) which was SLOOOW and when there is many visitors VPS exausts all physical and virtual memory, and then 500-s starts to show.

So, upping memory does help if you have many visitors, but if there is something not working properly…it’l use all memory very fast.

I’m thinking of moving to hostgator, anways. Hope there is no problems like this.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:24:55 +0000

I am having similar (or same?) problem with Dreamhost. I’ve upgraded to 1GB VPS, but it exausts all memory with tons of sleeping php5.cgi processes.

Top shows no CPU load but zero available memory (just like yours).

I am so switching to other hosting.

By: JavaGenki

JavaGenki — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:23:21 +0000

This sounds very similar to my problem at Dreamhost. In my case, I can’t attach any files to posts on a phpBB forum that I run Ã¢â‚¬â€œ it eventually times out with a 500 error. I contacted support and after many exchanges was finally told that I was “pushing close to the limitations of memory usage” Ã¢â‚¬â€œ and yes it was recommended that I “upgrade” to a Dreamhost VPS. I mentioned that I found this extremely odd since the forum I run has had maybe 1 or 2 visitors a day for many months now Ã¢â‚¬â€œ very slow. I also have a blog with very little traffic. I had only the default plugins (WP-cache) which I have disabled but still I cannot add attachments to forum posts. From everything I have found the issue appears to have started a couple of months ago and seems to coincide with the issues that all of the other Dreamhost users were reporting. In the logs I am
seeing “Premature end of script headers: php5.cgi”. Has anyone had any luck resolving these errors?

By: Daniel Costalis

Daniel Costalis — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:06:03 +0000

Stumbled upon this while working on a similar problem…

However: “this does not reconcile with the Unix top command which reveals nothing extraordinary happening on my virtual private server”.

It seems to match up pretty well. You’re using 150MB of memory, and 80MB of swap memory, thus the 230MB of total used memory that is showing. I really think DH should give you more swap memory than that… but with my account at 400MB, I rarely end up using half of it.

By: Noumaan

Noumaan — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:55:17 +0000

I spent almost 9 days now thinking that my site’s been hacked and my visitors are going somewhere else. It started when on 8th february I suddenly noticed a 50% drop in my site’s visitors. When I checked the error logs It showed premature end of script error. I troubleshooted on my own since then and support replies are reporting that every thing is fine at their end and I must solve my site issues. I am not on a PS I am on a regular shared hosting package.

What I should do now? move to a better host? I cant afford to move I just paid them for another year.

By: oops hey

oops hey — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 14:32:56 +0000

heem.. this article make me nervous :)… It’s been a month use Dreamhost as my hosting. Just hopping miracle 😀